Indonesia in Grief

I dunno if there was any other country as unfortunate as my country Indonesia, in case you haven’t heard about it we are so “gifted” with disasters these years. As far as I could remember it was started with the tsunami in Aceh at the end of 2004 and followed with many other disasters whether they were natural disasters or accidents.

Just in 2007, we had several earthquake in different islands [except Borneo, thank god], plane accidents, ship accidents, hot mud floods, floods etc. I remember few weeks ago that everyday we got news about people died because of them. It’s sad, sadder when we find out that they were not merely because god wanted them to happen but we made them. We’ve created a monster of natural disaster as the fact that we don’t love the nature enough, not enough to forget our selfishness.

In the newspaper just today I read about areas in Batam where they took sands to then sell them to Singapore that created hell lots of holes. It’s feared that soon the island would vanish as they keep on taking the sands. Is this all about money? Should it be like this?

Hot mud flood in east Java has been the hot issue, right now they trying to shut the hole where the mud comes from by putting hundreds of iron balls, this far there’s no significant result but lets just cross our fingers and pray. This flood didn’t come by nature, it was caused by a drilling company and has caused damage and lost for people who lived around. Is all about money?

Floods that happened in Jakarta [as the worst area] and several other cities, as well as my temporary city, were caused by humans’ habit of not caring that this life is not just about themselves and about today. Why I say so? Have people that throw garbage to the river ever thought that what they threw would come back and attack them and other people who didn’t do the same mistake as they did? NO. One day I talked to someone and what came from him was a more religious cynic comment. “How can they throw garbage to the river? If they’re people who have religion they know that cleanliness is part of your faith”. Abso-bloody-lutely true.

There was such a weird statement from an old man who I work with, maybe this is just a consequences of working with older people, you wouldn’t understand the way they think. It’s still about the flood, he said “they were preparing [be ready for] the flood, that’s why it then happened. They just supposed to pray”. It took me several minutes to process his words in my born-to-be-slow brain, well I know that be ready for the flood wasn’t the best way. We should’ve prevent it, not causing the flood then be ready for it. But it was better than just sit and wait and pray, I mean god wouldn’t do anything if we didn’t do anything, right? Praying is what we do along with actions, in my opinion.

All those I’ve mentioned were something “natural”, then there were plan and ship accidents that caused by bad bad bad quality of airlines and ship management and supervision from I dunno, government or transportation department officer?

Lavina I ship was quite tragedy, of how the ship burned suddenly and killed so many people whether because of the fire and smoke or because of drowning. Later the ship which was still in the middle of the sea was investigated by the people in charge and followed by press when suddenly the ship, which previously announced safe for people to get on, sank. This second accident also killed some people, both from the investigator and press sides.

Adam Air - an airline company, is on the verge of breaking down after 2 plane crashes. One of them remains a mystery until this moment because they never find the plane, just pieces which suspected to be part of the plane. Then the issue of Indonesian Bermuda Triangle brought up to the surface, according to experts this case isn’t the first one because there were numbers of plane which disappeared around the same area. Isn’t that CRAZY? Indonesian Bermuda Triangle, we should change the name thoughK.

I said to my cousin maybe then the safest way to travel was to take Garuda airlines in account of its famous quality. But days after, one of its planes crashes at Yogyakarta’s airport made me shock of saying what I said to my cousin. This time some Australian died, I wonder if it caused a travel warning [again].

From the deepest of my heart I give my condolences to the victim of all the tragedies that happened in Indonesia, hopefully this is a “sacrifice” for a better Indonesia, not just another tragedy but an eye opening. Salam Indonesia Bersatu.